"If you drew an honest picture of a financial institution's architecture, it looks like spaghetti," Freeman said.

"The financial sector is not good at throwing the old stuff out, and there is definitely less pressure from clients to innovate. A lot of these organizations spend more money on keeping legacy technologies running than making new technologies work for them."

However, according to a recent position paper released by Omgeo, operational risk and compliance is the driver for adoption of new technologies, in particular straight through processing (STP).

The paper, Risk, Transparency and Efficiency, looks at the impact of risk on the Asia-Pacific region's financial community and argues that risk is now being seen as a concern for the entire operation, not just in the front office.

Because of this, technology solutions are increasingly being sought across Asia-Pacific to counter operational risk and improve trade processing automation.

But with all this talk of risk, Omgeo regional manager of Australia and New Zealand, Julie Feaunati said people in the financial sector are confused when it comes to setting priorities.

"American firms are taking risk very seriously; however, in Australia they are only seen to be taking it seriously," Feaunati said.

The paper also stressed the need to win back trust pointing out that being competitive is about balancing risk, transparency and efficiency.

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